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In our emails, sent once or twice a week, you'll receive:
• alerts on new threats to Maryland's environment
• opportunities to join other Marylanders on urgent actions
• updates on the decisions that impact our environment
• resources to help you create a cleaner, greener future

Keep Maryland Safe From Drilling

Oil and gas companies want to start drilling in Maryland using a dangerous process called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." They want to get started as soon as possible, regardless of the dangerous effects of drilling we’re seeing in nearby states like Pennsylvania. Well, they’ve got a fight on their hands – thousands of Marylanders are joining our effort to help stop gas drilling from threatening our environment and our public health.

A threat to Maryland’s environment

The oil and gas industry wants to start drilling—known as “fracking”—in Maryland as soon as possible. Yet for years, they’ve left a trail of damage to the environment and public health right next door in Pennsylvania.

Gas drilling is risky and dangerous

In Pennsylvania, we’ve seen drinking water contaminated, waste spilled into rivers and streams, forests trampled by drilling rigs and trucks, and air pollution levels spiking near drilling sites.

Fracking in Pennsylvania has generated 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater that is loaded with toxic chemicals, corrosive salts, and sometimes even radioactive particles. We cannot risk our beloved rivers, streams, forests and fields to fracking.

Now, with a new proposed Liquified Fracked Gas Facility in Cove Point, Maryland faces the massive threat of pollution to our air and our precious water. If built, this facility would incentivize drilling to begin in our own state, create community-disrupting pipelines, and release global warming emissions during a time when Maryland is working to decrease our contribution to greenhouse gas pollution.

A track record of damage and pollution

Fracking companies say “trust us.” Yet next door in Pennsylvania, drilling companies have committed thousands of violations of environmental laws in the past few years alone. We can’t let Maryland’s environment see these kinds of effects:

Drinking water advisories each year for more than 325,000 residents near Pittsburgh; and

Explosions and accidents that have put local families and workers at risk.

Together, we can keep Maryland safe from drilling

Drilling in Maryland would threaten our clean water, clean air, and treasured places. So Environment Maryland is mobilizing concerned residents from across the state to keep us protected from dirty and dangerous gas drilling. Powerful lobbyists for the gas industry will fight us tooth and nail. But with your support, we can win real results to keep Maryland’s people and treasured natural places safe from drilling.

Issue updates

From Fortune 500 companies, to mom-and-pop operators, to firms like Chevron who tout their clean records, virtually all drilling and fracking companies are prone to infractions of environmental rules, a new report says. The analysis of Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry over a four-year period found that fracking companies violate protections for air, water, and health more than once each day on average.

Fracking is dirty. From the very beginning of clearing a site for drilling, through extraction, transport and delivery of finished products, fracking poses significant risks to our air and water and to human health. People who live and work near fracking sites are at greater risk for respiratory and neurological diseases.

Baltimore, MD— As Maryland considers whether the dirty drilling practice known as “fracking” should be allowed, residents next door in Pennsylvania today recounted their stories of illness, water contamination, and damage to their livelihoods due to dirty drilling operations. Environment Maryland Research & Policy Center presented the residents’ Shalefield Stories as the latest evidence for rejecting fracking, even as state officials consider whether drilling practice will be allowed in Maryland.

Annapolis, MD — Today, a new Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center report called “Fracking by the Numbers” measures the damage being done by dirty drilling across the country. Even as a Maryland state commission is working on guidelines for fracking in the state, the reportis the first study of its kind to measure the footprint of fracking damage to date— including toxic wastewater, water use, chemical use, air pollution, land damage and global warming emissions.